Being diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease as a teenager, Jenna Sumner saw how it affected not only herself, but her whole family.
After earning a master's degree in clinical psychology from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 2003, Sumner founded The Cambridge Professional Center in Morristown to help others deal with the emotional side of their diagnosis.
“I was 18 when I was diagnosed and it’s tough. You get a lot of help medically and you get a lot of help physically, but where is the emotional help? Not just for you as the patient, but also as the family. Where is the help for the parents when a child is newly diagnosed?” said Sumner, who is the owner and program director at Cambridge.
“The Cambridge Professional Center was an idea that I had long ago to establish a place where when children were initially diagnosed, whether it be IBD or any kind of chronic illness, there would be a place that the families could go and you could get counseling for the child as well as the parents. What you really need is general and gentle information at the very beginning of their diagnosis because that’s in fact what you’re dealing with.”
Located in Morristown, The Cambridge Professional Center provides comprehensive counseling and psychotherapy services for children, adolescents, adults and families.
“There are a lot of people who need the services and the nice and unique thing about our counseling center is that we see families, children and adolescents. There’s a lot of counselors who like to specialize in adults and addiction, etc., but we really like the idea of being more family-centered,” Sumner said.
“We also see individual adults but we have a very interesting model and we see kids and adolescents. I think that’s very needed because sometimes it’s a parenting issue and sometimes it’s an issue with what’s going on more specifically with the child. So it’s good that we do that.”
After graduating from The University of Texas with an undergraduate degree in chemistry and psychology, Sumner and her two daughters accompanied her husband Jim on his travels as a pharmaceutical salesman before settling in Morristown. While in Michigan, she began thinking about starting her own counseling center and after graduating from FDU, started The Cambridge Center, partly to help with her own healing.
“I started the Cambridge Center out of the loss of my husband,” Sumner said. “One of our other specialties is loss and grief. That’s the reason Cambridge was established really.”
Sumner sees many families, especially children and adolescents, trying to deal with a faster-paced world and its higher expectations. She also sees the need for teenagers to have an adult they can talk to and trust.
“Anxiety and depression, that’s a specialty for us. I could run the center alone on anxiety. I think particularly in the Northeast, we’re pretty driven here. I think that reverberates in families. It’s stressful. We’re also dealing with an awful lot of anxiety and depression amongst teenagers. I think the stress that they feel is a lot,” said Sumner, who is also the director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Morristown-Beard School.
“You’d be surprised how many kids I talk to don’t quite understand the illness that they have. So it’s helpful I think to have an adult that they can talk to. It’s not their parent and they can hear some education as far as what is going on with you and whether that comes from the chronic illness.”
Once Cambridge was firmly established, Sumner reached out to the Pediatric Gastroenterology Department at Morristown Memorial-Goryeb Children’s Hospital to build a relationship with them. She was responsible for developing a model for families that now involves an ongoing research study between Cambridge and the hospital.
“Dr. Joel Rosh is the head of the pediatric GI group and we have established a study where for families that have a child that’s newly diagnosed, they go through a series of counseling sessions at Cambridge. If we feel they need more or they want more, they can either continue with us or they can go to somebody else. There’s no obligation. That’s just one of the things I’ve done as program director, is establish that connection and establish that ongoing study.”
Sumner has studied at The Ackerman Family Institute in New York City and plans on continuing her education in Child Psychology and Family Systems. She only works with two or three clients each day.
“I pride myself on that fact. I’m sorry, you can’t see eight or ten people a day. I absolutely get depressed and I absolutely get bummed by some of the emotional stress that the families are carrying or the pain that they’re carrying.”
She does her best to de-stresses herself with exercise, eating very healthy, professional massages and seeing her own therapist. She’s written some counseling books for children including “Letters to Elizabeth” which deals with a mother’s alcoholism and being away from her family, written in letterform.
“With mental health, we really need to understand even more because as much progress as we’ve made, there’s a lot more to be made. People still do view it as that stigma. They really come in under some pretty significant pain,” Sumner said.
For more information about The Cambridge Professional Center, LLC, call 973-971-0660 or visit http://www.cambridgecenternj.com/.
Help the Homeless
Kerry is a beautiful, 1½-year-old black and white female cat, who was hoping for a home for Christmas but is still available for adoption. Kerry is in foster care and is used to being in a home. Best of all, this sweetie is spayed, combo tested, and vaccinated. She always uses her litter box. She loves to follow her foster mommy everywhere and will make a great companion. Wouldn't you love a beautiful kitty to great you when you come home?
To adopt Kerry or for more information, call Claudine at 973-886-1485 or email her at Doggie54@optonline.net.